Chapter 449: New Land Mark with a Surprise

It had been two days since they had tamed Momo and during those two days they were able to make a lot of progress throughout the prairie. Momo's speed just made rushing through the grass and hills of the area so much easier than it ever was before. If they came across large groups of enemies then Momo was able to use her burst of agility with her ability to get away rather easily so there weren't any disadvantageous situations that they had to be put through.

Although they did avoid some fights Joshua and the rest of his group didn't shy away from combat when given the chance. They had come to the prairie not only to explore the place, but to also jump start their experience gains in a much tougher environment. If they just avoided all conflict while exploring the area then they wouldn't gain any strength and Joshua highly doubted they would be able to take on the stronger creatures in the prairie any time soon. So they would stop and fight under the right circumstances.

On several occasions they would come across groups of predators that would chase after Momo in an attempt to gain an easy meal and Joshua's group would decide whether the beast that were after Momo were worth stopping to fight. Sometimes a large pack of well over a dozen coyote would try to surround her and those large groups were the ones they tended to avoid fighting. Whether it was a dozen coyotes or four to five bobcats they would avoid such hectic fights. Instead they would take on the smaller groups that chased after Momo and occasionally use their carcasses to attract vultures to fight as well. Joshua was making sure they all got use to taking on large flying enemies since the vultures weren't the strongest flying beast around.

The constant fighting had gained Joshua another level which was a far faster rate of leveling than he had experienced in the past month. He wasn't even the one that was leveling at the fastest rate since there were other members in their group that were more than five levels lower than his. Jacob and Evelyn were bother level seventy-three at the start of the expedition, but they were on the verge of gaining their forth level at this point. Vince's group was also leveling at a ridiculous pace compared to any of the other dungeons or territories that they had gone to in the past.

It was clear that if they were all leveling at such a fast rate the challenges of some of the more dangerous parts of the prairie was probably out of the league of the usual groups of explorers at their current levels. Joshua knew that their group had a lot going for them that set them up to be better prepared for these types of situations than other explorer groups. After all other groups didn't have giant beast fighting alongside them, the ability to use illusions to hide their presence while moving past dangerous beast, or a leader that could usually hold his ground against most of the giant beast on his own for a time. He didn't want to play it up like his group was the only one with people in it that had special abilities but he wasn't going to be too humble about things.

In the end he decided it would probably be best to keep gaining experience against the beast around the outskirts of the prairie until their levels started to stabilize for a bit. At that point it would be much safer to take the group into more dangerous parts of the prairie. Besides there was no way that there wasn't anything interesting around the outskirts of the prairie as well. Joshua knew that there were beast up on top of the mountains that surrounded the prairie and some of those beast could end up being even more powerful than the ones they would come across in the prairie. Finding out where the safest entrance to the mountain range was located could also be useful for the future.

One of the things that did happen while they rested on the first night after exploring the prairie while riding Momo was the overly anticipated event of the girls in the group coming up with the names for Momo's three children. It was a pretty big discussion throughout all of dinner that night. Lilly even brought the three not so little kid ferrets out for everyone to play with while they discussed what names to give them. Of course this was after she made sure that all of her beast companions had already been fed. Joshua could only feel bad for the ridiculous names that he was certain that the three ferrets were going to gain, but at least they all seemed to be happy.

In the end they decided on naming the two girl ferrets similar names since they looked similar except one had a black fur that rose up higher on its feet than the other. They decided to name them Miyu and Yumi which were surprisingly cute in Joshua's mind but still seemed similar to the name that Lilly had given their mother When it came to the boy ferret they decided to name him Toto to keep up the theme of the rest of the family names. The girls pretty much spent the rest of the night before watch duty playing with the energetic fur balls that loved all of the attention.

Joshua wasn't surprised that the little critters were getting so much attention, but what he was surprised by was the fact that they had each gained a level over the day they had been with the group. They hadn't been out of Lilly's soul realm for the entire day so the fact that they had gained a level so quickly was most likely from them simply growing. This fact opened a lot of ideas in Joshua's mind for how beast companions could interact with people.

Up to this point just about all of Lilly's beast companions were already full grown or at least grown enough to the point where they could fight and gain levels on their own in the wild. These three ferrets were the first creatures that Joshua had seen Lilly tame that were passively gaining strength even when they weren't involved in combat. The only way this could happen is if they were still growing and maturing. This opened the possibility that people could actually gain powerful beast companions in a completely different way than Joshua thought he would have to in the future.

At first Joshua believed that the only two ways of gaining powerful beast companions was by challenging them and proving your worth to a powerful beast or getting chosen by a beast that feels a connection to you. He never believed gaining the allegiance of a beast would be as simple as Lilly made it look unless you were a tamer to some degree. However now there was a whole new option of raising a young beast up and allowing them to grow in strength as they matured. Hell you could probably even get the eggs of some beast and raise them to be your beast companions if you were lucky.

Putting those thoughts aside Joshua was focusing on the task at hand as his group once again decided to spend the day up on Momo's back as they roamed the outskirts of the prairie in an attempt to find anything of major interest. Joshua decided that they should get a little closer to the mountain range to see if they could find a clear way up it at any time, but he made sure not to get to close just in case they passed by something of significance. They could clearly tell if there was anything that looked like a way up the mountain from a distance. Joshua didn't plan on making the mistake of climbing up a part of the mountain without knowing if it was the true entrance. They could end up facing a level ninety plus beast that would tear them a new one the moment they got up high enough.

Throughout the entire morning they didn't spot a single entrance along the mountain range that looked like it would lead them to an entirely new area. Joshua wasn't surprised by this since there were so many places for them to search if they wanted to find an entrance to the mountain range. It was likely that the mountain range would have even higher level creatures than the prairie based off of how the different territories in the area had been arranged. If so the entrance to the mountain range would most likely be at the back pf the prairie and well away from where they were at the moment.

While exploring the area they did come across a few predators that went after their group, but none that gave them too much trouble. Joshua was just assuming his luck was keeping them from running in to some real trouble at the moment, but he doubted that would hold up when they started exploring deeper into the prairie.

It wasn't until around noon that they finally came across something that was different from what they were used to seeing while exploring the prairie. Momo reached the cress of a large hill and was able to see a large rock structure in the middle of the prairie. There several enormous rocks that looked like giant sky scrapers were sticking up in the air with some leaning one way or the other. This spectacle stretched out over a large area with short grass that would make it easy for them to move through as they made their approach.

The first thing Joshua noticed about the approaching area with his aura sense was the fact that he couldn't sense any beast nearby which stood out to him rather glaringly. Before even when they were in areas with less beast around there would still be at least a few prairie dogs or roaming coyotes looking for a meal around. After observing the area for a bit Joshua decided to lead the group forward so they could figure out what was going on.